Variation Sets

Fractal Architect, out of the box, provides a 3D variation set, Core 3D, and a 2D variation set, Flam3 Legacy.When you first open the app, the Core 3D is the active set. You can create your own variation sets very easily.

The variations library and the OpenCL kernel templates are licensed with the GNU Public License version 3. Complete source code for all variations and the OpenCL kernel templates are included in the app package.

The individual variations were created by the Apophysis user and development community, the JWildfire developer, and the Flam4CUDA developers. The original variation source code was translated to the OpenCL C language and is used by the OpenCL kernel templates.

Historical Note: the developer of Fractal Architect was the developer of the open source Flam4CUDA for Mac app.

No DLL's

The OpenCL rendering engine does not support DLL's and instead creates the renderer from the OpenCL source code at runtime. There is a one time render engine compilation step.

The compile step is fast except for the Intel HD 4000 and 5000 GPU's have very long time compile times. The Intel CPU compile times are very fast.

Both CPU and GPU Rendering

OpenCL supports rendering on either CPU or GPU (if your Mac has an OpenCL supported discrete or integrated GPU). Intel Iris GPU's are only supported on OS X Mavericks.

Render Performance

Macs with discrete Nvidia or ATI GPUs can render much faster than CPU rendering. The Intel Iris GPUs are not as powerful.

GPU

Render Time

GPU/CPU Peformance

15" Retina Macbook Pro - Mid 2012

Nvidia GT 650M

4.93 sec

325% X Faster than CPU

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3720QM CPU

16.08 sec

Baseline CPU

Intel HD 4000 GPU

79.78 sec

496% X Slower than CPU

Macbook Air Mid 2013

Intel HD 5000

34.485 sec

30% Faster than CPU

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4250U CPU

44.923 sec

Baseline CPU

Macbook Pro Early 2011

ATI 6750M

8.74 sec

242% Faster than CPU

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2720QM CPU

21.08 sec

Baseline CPU

27” iMac Mid 2010

Intel CPU

39.707 sec

Baseline CPU

Creating Variation Sets

Variation Sets allows you to create subsets from this large library. Either 2D or 3D Variation sets3D variation sets can have 3D variations in them.